In the digital age, the cloud has become the cornerstone of business operations, heralding a new era of innovation and efficiency. However, with the shift to cloud-based infrastructures, particularly private clouds, organizations are facing a new set of web security challenges that demand a robust and agile response. NSFOCUS vWAF steps in as a guardian of web security, offering a comprehensive solution tailored for the dynamic needs of private cloud environments.
The New Web Security Challenges in the Cloud
As organizations embrace the cloud for their business operations, they encounter a variety of web threats that are both familiar and novel. Unwanted intrusions, virtual machine escapes, and sensitive data leaks are just the tip of the iceberg. The cloud demands a new level of web security that can adapt to the unique challenges of virtualized environments.
Clients face several hurdles in their cloud deployment:
- Compatibility: Security products must work seamlessly across various public and private cloud platforms.
- Centralized Management: With diverse business units, how can security be managed centrally while allowing individual departments to operate autonomously?
- Deployment Flexibility: Security solutions must adapt to the deployment methods of the business, whether virtualized, containerized, or cloud-native.
New Requirements for Web Protection in Private Clouds
The characteristics of virtualized environments set the stage for new expectations from web protection products:
- Elastic and Scalable Defense: Products must offer the same level of protection as hardware devices but with the flexibility to scale up or down as needed, defending against the OWASP Top 10 web attacks.
- Automation and Management: In the mainstream virtualization environment, automated deployment and management are crucial to mitigate risks associated with security policies not keeping pace with virtual resource changes.
- Granular Security Policies: The ability to inspect and protect traffic entering and exiting specific virtual machines (VMs) is essential.
- Flexible Deployment Options: Deployment methods such as inline, reverse proxy, and passive monitoring are necessary for quick and easy setup in cloud scenarios.
NSFOCUS vWAF: A Leader in Web Application Firewalls
NSFOCUS, with 17 years of experience in cybersecurity offensive and defensive expertise accumulation, has been recognized as a niche player in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for four consecutive years and a notable vendor in the Asia/Pacific Context Magic Quadrant for Web Application Firewalls in 2018. The NSFOCUS WAF virtualization version—vWAF—provides an elastic, scalable, and on-demand solution for virtualized data centers.
Key Features of NSFOCUS vWAF
- Flexibility and Scalability: NSFOCUS vWAF supports seamless upgrades through certificates, allowing customers to purchase and expand as needed. It also offers high availability and load sharing through load balancing solutions, enabling quick scaling during traffic surges.
- Compatibility with Multiple Cloud Environments: vWAF supports various virtual machine image formats and containerized deployments, compatible with major cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, Huawei Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and more.
- Centralized Management with Domain-specific Operations: NSFOCUS ESPC allows for centralized management of multiple vWAFs, including device management, performance monitoring, and policy deployment, while also supporting domain-specific security policies for different business departments.
- High Performance: With application layer throughput ranging from 50Mbps to 10Gbps, vWAF meets the performance needs of various private cloud scenarios.
- Flexible Deployment and Simple Maintenance: vWAF supports diverse deployment modes, including inline, passive, reverse proxy, and plugin cluster deployments. It also provides a QGA interface and supports VMtools for automated instance initialization and RESTful API for cloud management platform integration.
Protecting Private Cloud Web Security with NSFOCUS vWAF
- Multi-layered Security Mechanisms: vWAF protects web applications and underlying infrastructure by detecting attacks on applications, plugins, web servers, and networks. It includes rule-based detection and advanced mechanisms to track automated attacks, defend against 0day vulnerabilities, and filter sensitive information returned to clients.
- Asset-Centric Protection: Focusing on the web server assets of private cloud users, vWAF organizes web security solutions based on IP addresses, ports, OS, and web services, generating security policies that precisely fit the asset environment.
- Optimized Configuration Wizard: Drawing on extensive customer service experience, vWAF offers an optimized configuration wizard that guides users through defining their web server assets and provides the best security policies based on the asset environment, simplifying and facilitating security configuration while ensuring precise rule utilization.
NSFOCUS vWAF is more than just a web application firewall; it’s a strategic ally in the quest for robust private cloud web security. With its comprehensive features and industry recognition, vWAF stands as a testament to NSFOCUS’s commitment to safeguarding the digital frontier.
